1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to the data processing field. More specifically, the present invention relates to the arrangement of text by a software application.
2. Background Art
Computer systems are often used to display text to a user on a computer display or to output text to a printer. When reading an article with a lot of text, there is sometimes a tendency for the reader""s eye to go to the wrong line when moving from one line to the next. For example, instead of picking up on the next line, the reader may instead pick up on the line just read, and then get momentarily confused until the reader realizes the mistake. The reader must then go back and start the sentence over again to regain the train of thought, trying carefully to go to the correct line the next time. Sometimes, in going from one line to the next, the reader may pick up one line too far down, missing a line. Depending on the grammar flow, the reader may not detect the mistake, causing the reader to miss some potentially important information.
Most modern software applications that manipulate text, such as word processors and web browsers, have an automatic word wrap feature that breaks a line of text along word boundaries when a margin is encountered, and may include many features such as font size, margins, spacing between letters, etc. that control how text appears to a user. However, these features address the physical arrangement of the text without regard to which words are present in the text and their positions relative to each other. The readability of text on a computer display or printout is affected by the relative positions of words in the text. For example, if two adjacent lines of text begin with the same word, the user might be inclined to skip a line when reading the text, or at least to pause to assure he or she is reading the proper line. Even if the words are different, if two adjacent lines of text begin with the same part of speech, the text will probably be readable if a line is skipped, making the text harder to read. The prior art applications have no way of changing the line position of words to make the text more readable based on defined readability problems that may exist in the text. Without an apparatus and method for changing word positions to improve readability of text, software applications will continue to arrange text without regard to potential readability problems, and users will thus continue to have problems reading computer-generated text when readability problems exist in the text.
An apparatus and method improve the readability of text on a computer system by changing the positioning of one or more words to eliminate potential problems in readability that can be identified by examining the text. When a potential problem is identified, the word to word positioning of text may be adjusted to compress one or more lines and/or to expand one or more lines to move one or more words to a different line. For example, if two adjacent lines begin with the same word, the first line could be compressed so the first word of the second line is moved to the end of the first line. In the alternative, the first line could be expanded so the last word of the first line is moved to the first word of the second line. By selectively changing the positioning of words, the readability of the text may be greatly improved.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.